Jerrica runs from a lipstick fever dream in a white power suit, polkadot top, and abstract pillbox hat.

Jem’s bandmates relax offstage. Kimber, at left, wears a cropped Nehru jacket over a ribbed top with geometric-print pastel culottes.

The Misfits have sartorial snarl down pat with graphic prints, fringe, and fishnet (the draped fishnet skirt is a particularly high fashion touch).

The Misfit’s lead singer, Pizzazz, dances in a mustard trench and belted mini-dress, unbuttoned for maximum gam exposure. Her fancy footwear includes one shocking pink thigh high and a gold bracelet watch worn at the ankle over her boot.

Pizzazz threatens Jem, who’s in a fuchsia Edwardian-inspired jacket with mutton sleeves and a matching fascinator.

When news came late last month of a live-action remake of the cult-classic cartoon Jem, the question was not, “How will they make the Jem Rockin’ Roadster drive through walls?” nor, “How will they stage concerts on a giant metallic star that flings around the atmosphere like a psychedelic flying saucer?” but rather: How will they get the costumes right?

First, a Jem primer, because what little people seem to remember of the show is a gaggling girl-band cartoon rendered in infrared pastels, with an emphasis on “glamour and glitter, fashion and fame,” as the show’s theme song goes—Barbie on acid, for short. But just beneath that surface is a third-wave feminist, science-fiction high-fashion narrative that serves up a “play nice” moral through a glamorous battle of the bands. Jerrica Benton finds herself in charge of half of her father’s record company when he passes away. But when her villainous co-owner, Eric, threatens to cut her out, she uses a holographic computer named Synergy (another inheritance spoil) to transform into Jem, a glam-rock goddess with sugar-pink hair who belts out hits in the Tiffany/Debbie Gibson mall-tour genre with a multicultural all-babe band of former foster kids. Jerrica also runs a home for orphaned girls, the Starlight House, and, as both herself and her holographic alter ego, is two points in a love triangle with purple-haired hunk Rio Pacheco. Jerrica struggles to hide her double life and Synergy from Rio and the public, take care of her orphaned charges, and battle the Misfits, a snarling rival all-girl band who project menace from metal pouf hair and in songs like “We’re Makin’ Mischief” (and whose costumes, you might note, look suspiciously like Céline spring 2014). Jem was certainly the only Saturday-morning cartoon ever to ask if women really can have it all--the rock ’n’ roll progenitor of leaning in. And the whole thing happens in a world so “truly outrageous,” as the show’s theme goes, that rendering it properly in live action would require an aesthetic articulation of Wes Anderson proportions.

Many cartoons rely on a single costume to summarize a character’s entire physical identity, but Jem took advantage of the infinite possibilities of animation by changing characters’ costumes as many as three or four times per episode. The fansite Rock Jem has even catalogued each of the outfits from the show’s 65 episodes; there are more than 900 ensembles.

And these were not the usual proto-Madonna getups we associate with the mid-80s, but highly inventive, intricately detailed ensembles, with matching accessories. Each character had a wardrobe, all conceived by the show’s fashion designer, listed on IMBD as Debra L. Pugh (it must be the only animated series to include that credit). The result was something like Balmain as illustrated by Lisa Frank: science-fiction cotton-candy couture that was punked-up pretty and sometimes just plain weird.

Director Jon M. Chu, producer Jason Blum, and Scooter Braun, who are helming the reboot, have announced their intention to crowdsource much of the film’s production. (Troublingly, the triumvirate has also allegedly shut out creator Christy Marx). But for a story that used fashion so inventively—perhaps even innovatively—this would be a colossal mistake. Jem could be as exciting a costume moment as Mona May’s work in Clueless—which, it’s worth noting, was a wildly successful, female-centric film that was far smarter than its premise suggested. And the work of so many designers sits firmly in the Jem aesthetic, from Rodarte’s leggy, dreamlike creatures, to Rochas’s buttercream-frosted florals, to Betsey Johnson’s flirtatiously amusing coquette. Sign up accessories darling Sophia Webster for loony-cartoony shoes and clutches, and Shourouk for Jerrica’s signature star-shaped earrings, which she presses to summon the holographic powers of Synergy. Perhaps they can even wrangle back the cartoon’s costume designer—then, as Jerrica commands to metamorphose into Jem, “It’s showtime, Synergy.”

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